Well-known Russian public figures and human rights activists issued a statement in the defence of Vasily Aleksanyan.

The inhuman treatment of prisoners in the Yukos case goes on. Vasily Aleksanyan, severely ill with a number of diseases, is being condemned to a painful death in the prison hospital. We are not sure what the executioners have in mind: are they intending to lash out at a blind and dying man and then use the sentence as an example to use against other victims in the Yukos case? Or are they intending to ruin Russia’s reputation so as to justify its ‘Byzantine’ isolation?

We demand the Russian authorities’ immediate implementation of the European Court of Human Right’s instructions to have Aleksanyan admitted to a specialist AIDS clinic and the establishing of an independent medical examination.

We demand and immediate investigation into Aleksanyan’s claim that investigators obtained a confession from him by blackmailing him with qualified medical care.

We are urging all of you who believe in the principles of the law and the good name of our country to step forward in the defence of Vasily Aleksanyan.